Scaling of city attractiveness for foreign visitors through big data of human economical and social media activity

Scientific studies investigating laws and regularities of human behavior are nowadays increasingly relying on the wealth of widely available digital information produced by human social activity. In this paper we leverage big data created by three different aspects of human activity (i.e., bank card transactions, geotagged photographs and tweets) in Spain for quantifying city attractiveness for the foreign visitors. An important finding of this papers is a strong superlinear scaling of city attractiveness with its population size. The observed scaling exponent stays nearly the same for different ways of defining cities and for different data sources, emphasizing the robustness of our finding. Temporal variation of the scaling exponent is also considered in order to reveal seasonal patterns in the attractivenessComment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Crowd-sourced Photographic Content for Urban Recreational Route Planning

Routing services are able to provide travel directions for users of all modes of transport. Most of them are focusing on functional journeys (i.e. journeys linking given origin and destination with minimum cost) while paying less attention to recreational trips, in particular leisure walks in an urban context. These walks are additionally predefined by time or distance and as their purpose is the process of walking itself, the attractiveness of areas that are passed by can be an important factor in route selection. This factor is hard to be formalised and requires a reliable source of information, covering the entire street network. Previous research shows that crowd-sourced data available from photo-sharing services has a potential for being a measure of space attractiveness, thus becoming a base for a routing system that suggests leisure walks, and ongoing PhD research aims to build such system. This paper demonstrates findings on four investigated data sources (Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa and Geograph) in Central London and discusses the requirements to the algorithm that is going to be implemented in the second half of this PhD research. Visual analytics was chosen as a method for understanding and comparing obtained datasets that contain hundreds of thousands records. Interactive software was developed to find a number of problems, as well as to estimate the suitability of the sources in general. It was concluded that Picasa and Geograph have problems making them less suitable for further research while Panoramio and Flickr require filtering to remove photographs that do not contribute to understanding of local attractiveness. Based on this analysis a number of filtering methods were proposed in order to improve the quality of datasets and thus provide a more reliable measure to support urban recreational routing

Exploring urban visitors' mobilities. A multi-method approach

Aquesta tesi doctoral sorgeix de la necessitat d’aprofundir en el coneixement de les mobilitats dels visitants, entendre les decisions que configuren el seu comportament espacio-temporal i identificar i explorar els efectes que les seves mobilitats tenen sobre les destinacions urbanes. La tesi es desenvolupa entorn a quatre objectius específics que s’emmarquen en l’àmbit de recerca relacionat amb el seguiment de l’activitat dels visitants en destinacions turístiques urbanes. Cadascun d’aquests objectius es desenvolupa en cadascun dels articles científics que conformen aquesta tesi doctoral, publicats tots ells en revistes de revisió per parells. El primer article es proposa com a objectiu identificar els factors, relacionats amb el perfil socioeconòmic dels turistes i amb les característiques de la seva estada, que determinen la selecció d’opcions de transport i mobilitat sostenible per moure’s per la destinació urbana. El segon article pretén analitzar i comprendre com afecta el comportament espacio-temporal dels turistes en els seus patrons de consum econòmic i, per tant, en la generació d’ingressos per a l’economia local. El tercer article es proposa analitzar la influència de l’espai urbà sobre la forma en què els visitants es desplacen per la destinació. I finalment, el quart article té per objectiu reconstruir trajectòries i/o fluxos espacio-temporals a partir de dades geolocalitzades de les xarxes socials per tal de detectar patrons de mobilitat dels visitants de destinacions urbanes. Les fonts de dades i els mètodes utilitzats per complir amb els objectius de partida són diverses. En aquest sentit, la tesi aporta també una àmplia radiografia dels pros i les contres de les diferents fonts de dades disponibles per a l’anàlisi de les mobilitats dels visitants en destinacions turístiques.Esta tesis doctoral surge de la necesidad de profundizar en el conocimiento de las movilidades de los visitantes,entender las decisiones que configuran su comportamiento espaciotemporal e identificar y explorar los efectos que sus movilidades tienen sobre los destinos urbanos. La tesis se desarrolla en torno a cuatro objetivos específicos que se enmarcan en el ámbito de investigación de seguimiento de visitantes, y que se desarrollan en cada uno de los artículos científicos, publicados todos ellos en revistas de revisión por pares, que conforman esta tesis. El primer artículo se propone como objetivo identificar los factores, relacionados con el perfil socioeconómicos de los turistas y con las características de su estancia, que determinan la selección de opciones de transporte y movilidad sostenible para moverse por el destino urbano. El segundo artículo pretende analizar y comprender cómo afecta el comportamiento espaciotemporal de los turistas en sus patrones de consumo económico y, por tanto, en la generación de ingresos para la economía local. El tercer artículo se propone analizar la influencia del espacio urbano sobre la forma en que los visitantes se desplazan por el destino. Y finalmente, el cuarto artículo tiene por objetivo reconstruir trayectorias y / o flujos espaciotemporales a partir de datos geolocalizados de las redes sociales para detectar patrones de movilidad de los visitantes de destinos urbanos. Las fuentes de datos y los métodos utilizados para cumplir con los objetivos de partida son diversos. En este sentido, la tesis aporta también una amplia radiografía de los pros y contras de las diferentes fuentes de datos disponibles para el análisis de las movilidades de los visitantes en destinos turísticos.This dissertation arises from the need to deepen the knowledge of the mobility of visitors, understand the decisions that shape their spatiotemporal behaviour and identify and explore the effects that their mobility has on urban destinations. The thesis is developed around four specific objectives that fall within the scope of visitor tracking research, and that are developed in each of the scientific articles, all of them published in peer-reviewed journals, that make up this thesis. The first article aims to identify the factors, related to the socioeconomic profile of tourists and the characteristics of their stay, that determine the selection of sustainable transport and mobility options to move within the urban destination. The second article aims to analyse and understand how the visitors’ spatiotemporal behaviour affects their patterns of economic consumption and, therefore, the generation of income for the local economy. The third article aims to analyse the influence of the built environment on the visitors’ mobilities at destination. And finally, the fourth article aims to reconstruct trajectories and / or spatiotemporal flows from geolocated data obtained from social networks in order to detect visitors’ mobility patterns at urban destinations. The data sources and methods used to meet the objectives are multiple. In this sense, the thesis also provides an extensive x-ray of the pros and cons of the different data sources available for the analysis of visitors’ mobilities in tourist destinations

Horizon Report 2009

El informe anual Horizon investiga, identifica y clasifica las tecnologías emergentes que los expertos que lo elaboran prevén tendrán un impacto en la enseñanza aprendizaje, la investigación y la producción creativa en el contexto educativo de la enseñanza superior. También estudia las tendencias clave que permiten prever el uso que se hará de las mismas y los retos que ellos suponen para las aulas. Cada edición identifica seis tecnologías o prácticas. Dos cuyo uso se prevé emergerá en un futuro inmediato (un año o menos) dos que emergerán a medio plazo (en dos o tres años) y dos previstas a más largo plazo (5 años)

Assessing the potential of social media for estimating recreational use of urban and peri-urban forests

Acknowledgements The research for this paper was financially supported through the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the policies or official positions of the FOEN or the institutions they work for. We thank Rahul Deb Das for his assistance in data collection and processing. We gratefully acknowledge the comments and feedback of two anonymous reviewers.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Geomatics in physiognomic landscape research: A Dutch view

Geomatics is a technology and service sector focussing on the acquisition, storage, analysis and management of geographically referenced information for improved decision-making. Landscape physiognomic and research –and its GI science application. The geomatics developments since 40 years confront us with many new algorithms and a variety of geo data. Due to these the interest in physiognomic research has been increased. This article links the variety of geodata and its processing functions to the landscape physiognomic research framework. This link is based on an overview of the geo data, the intended applications in landscape physiognomic research and the functions to perform. The article provides an overview of geographical data using/driving methods and applications that may support physiognomic landscape research that longs from methods that rely on geo-data that ranges from a administratively defined (INSPIRE), professional experiment acquired  up to collected by volunteers. These methods may act manifold: describe, proof and project of space as could be perceived, imagined and created from both perspectives affectively and cognitively. Besides to communicate results the methods include persistently also analysis by visualization. Other findings are the interest in changing objects of the landscape and perception via moving subjects